Report from the Joint school council meeting Wednesday 3rd March 2010

As a student council, we regularly meet with other school councils in the local area. This helps us to understand what effect our work has on the local area, as well as seeing how other school councils function.  One way that we do this is through joint council meetings.  These involve pupils from other schools in Waltham Forest, as well as members of the local council's Community Cohesion Team, whose job it is to promote unity in the local community.

The latest joint council meeting was held on Wednesday 3^rd March, and Highams Park was represented by three members of the School Council: Nailah Hailstones-Lee, Rebecca Rutherford and Samuel Ebden.  We attended the meeting at Kelmscott School with around 30 members of other secondary school councils.  We were joined by Lindsey Buchannan, the Waltham Forest School Cohesion Officer.

We began the morning by playing icebreaking games, including ‘wink murder' and other games.  This helped us to learn more about the other students at the meeting, and made us feel more unified at the meeting.

We then spoke to our guest speakers, two dieticians working for the Healthy Schools initiative. With them we discussed the elements of a healthy diet, how to easily implement this diet while at school, and how the use of a good diet could be used to improve exam results.

We then went on to discuss how these ideas on good diets could be passed on to the other members of the schools we represent.  We looked at using colour, appropriate language and statistics.  We also talked about using online services, a Facebook account and even adverts to get these messages across to the public.

We concluded the meeting by speaking to a charity worker who has set up a youth centre in Leytonstone.  We looked at the positive effect that the centre is having on the local youth, and how that could be replicated within our own wards.  We then passed this information to our local youth MP, who will give the proposals to a funding committee in due course.

The meeting was a huge success, as it allowed us to see how other school councils work, the projects they are undertaking and the initiatives the local authority is using to improve the local area.  The next meeting will be in May, so watch this space!

Report by Samuel Ebden 11B2